Thursday, October 15, 2009

A Guest Piece From Cl.thier, A "Vision" for Downtown Larryville, and a Local Hipster Movie

Our first bit of business today comes from Cl.thier, who sent us this rather remarkable piece in which he turns the boys' own work against them! This may be the cleverest thing we've yet printed here (aside from Chip's boner jokes and several installments of the much-missed Harry Lupus series). Take a look:

Anatomy of a Hipster

N.ggle and Chip often like to practice the glorified armchair pyschoanalysis they pass off as "criticism" on unwitting foes such as Toby Keith, so let's see how N.ggle's own talkback comments hold up under such intense, intellectually-masturbatory scrutiny!

We'll take this seemingly innocuous comment concerning a gracious reader's recommendation of the recent Dr. Dog show at the Bottleneck. Here is the reader's comment:

"N.ggle - I recommend the Dr. Dog show tonight at The Bottleneck!"

And here is N.ggle's response:

"dr. nog saidYeah, I'd like to check it out (I've seen them before), but I'm passing on the Monday night rock.I'm not hip enough."

Immediately we notice N.ggle's use of the "dr." appelation, something he rarely uses on the blog, usually only when the topic deals with his "profession". Besides rubbing his doctorate in the face of his readers, perhaps, in his twisted hipster mind, N.ggle has come to regard faux cultural e-criticism and attending rock shows in Lawrence as some sort of "profession", of which he is a "professor". Remember, dear readers, arrogance lies very close to the heart of the hipster, though it is not the defining characteristic. O, no, revealing the darkness at the heart of the hipster might be even too much for this intrepid writer.

Next, N.ggle expresses his desire to see the band ("Yeah, I'd like to check it out..."), seeming to agree with the reader's generous tip-off that the band is worthy of seeing. In fact, N.ggle then seems to reinforce the reader's opinion of the band - "(I've seen them before)" - but a closer examination of this parenthetical reveals N.ggle's true hipster motives! The use of the parenthetical here implies a sort of aside (his doctoral thesis was on the theater!), as if N.ggle realizes his hipster identity is a performance, and thus he turns to the Hipster Gaze he believes is constantly on him, judging his hipster-ness, to point out that he, in fact, has already seen the band, hoping the St. Peter in charge of Hipster's Pearly Gates will make a little mark in his book - "N.ggle - seen Dr. Dog before they were even remotely popular enough to warrant a mention in his blog. 10 points." Once again, the arrogance that is the hipster rears its ugly head, though the hipster spent an hour trying to make it look as if it just rolled out of bed. N.ggle speaks past his actual audience to his imagined hipster audience, trying to win hipster cred for himself while mocking the apparent hipster wannabe and their passe suggestion, but placating them with the "I'd like to check it out..."

So why can't N.ggle check them out? Why, of course, the day of the week! Apparently there is some sort of hipster stricture against (or for, it's hard to tell) "Monday night rock". N.ggle, turning back towards his reader and away from the Hipster Gaze (though he never really gets away from it), claims he "is not hip enough" to go out on a Monday for a show. What this really means? "Only lame, non-hipster bands play on Monday nights (well at least anymore...Mondays used to be the hipster rock show nights until they became too popular and then everyone had to pretend they were so hip Mondays weren't hip anymore and Sundays became the hipster night, though even those are getting a little too popular so we're thinking of making Tuesday mornings the hip night to see unknown bands). But I can't say that's why I'm not going. I know, I'll say I'm not hip enough. That will trick the hipster wannabe into thinking that Mondays are a hip night to go out. Ha! I can't wait to tell all of my hipster friends that I tricked a hipster wannabe into going out on a Monday. We'll all have a mild, disinterested chuckle over that one!"

What a bizarre and scary place the mind of the hipster is. At some point, I'm pretty sure the extreme effort at disinterested irony will turn in on itself and eat the hipster alive, but this is probably a sort of sick goal of theirs, turning them into the zombie character they so love to ironically portray in hearty, yet disinterested communal gatherings. And perhaps this is the layer of hipster flesh and muscle right above the core of the hipster - the desire to fully participate in something, to joyfully embrace something, destroyed by the fear of ridicule for embracing something wholly. Thus, an ironic distance is kept from anything, allowing the hipster to drop anything or anyone at a moment's notice if it's deemed "uncool", allowing the hipster to keep in tact their chance at the empty prize they constantly vie for - they're hipster "cred". Zombies indeed!

How sad to know the hipster is fueled not by Hamm's, PBR, or a heightened sense of cultural awareness, but, like the 3rd grader hiding in the classroom during recess, by pure fear of social ridicule.

Fucking losers.

Richard: "And I thought all I meant was that Dr. Dog was on a school night. Thanks to Cl.thier, I plan to tone down my snark here and offer a kinder, gentler blog. But I won't be starting today."

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Downtown "merchants" (a quaint word the LJ-World loves to employ) met yesterday to discuss a new "vision" for Larryville's downtown area. No agreement was reached yet, but merchants agreed that the first step had to be dealing with the "vagrant" problem.

Chip: "Well, I suppose most 'visions' for downtown are not going to include that dude who runs around in his Spiderman suit carrying a doll on his shoulder."

Richard: "Oh, Dennis seems nice enough. The bigger problem, for me, is that downtown is too family-friendly. Sometimes I'm in a hurry to get from one bar to another and there's a fucking baby in the way, or a dog. I think we need to turn downtown into a pedestrian-only 'entertainment district' along the lines of a Bourbon or Beale Street, with PBR stands on every corner."

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Occasionally local hipsters get bored with just hanging at the Replay and playing in bands and decide to do something more interesting, such as making a collage or a movie.

The duo (Scary Manilow and Curvacia Vavoom) behind Larryville's favorite rockabilly/hipster band The Spook Lights have spent the last three years making a film called It Starts With Murder, a two-and-a-half hour opus that gets its local premiere next Wednesday at Liberty Hall (before being relegated to DVD and shown perpetually at various hipster parties around town where guests get shitfaced on Hamm's and watch themselves on screen).

Here's the plot summary from Lawrence.com: "Guests at a gaudy island resort (in this case, interior shots of the Jackpot Saloon and the filmmakers' basement stitched together with exterior shots of a Mexican beach resort) start dropping like flies, meeting the business end of a masked murderer's knife. Fortunately for the island's hapless law enforcement, one of these guests happens to be world-renowned super sleuth, Miss Mandrake."

According to Manilow, making a film proved to be unexpectedly difficult: "Our lives were work, movie, and band. We didn't go on vacation, we didn't get to go out at night — we had no life at all.”

Richard: "Well, I saw them 'out' a bunch of times. But maybe they were scouting locations or chatting up potential investors. At any rate, I look forward to seeing the film."